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The basic check I use for odometry is to have rviz accumulate laser scans in the odometric frame, and verify visually that they're coherent.

Set the Fixed Frame to odom (or whatever the name of your odometric frame is) and turn up the decay time on the laser scans (e.g., to 600 seconds). Drive the robot around, and see what happens with the accumulated laser scans. If the odometry is reasonable, you'll see a crude "map" being built. It should be obvious immediately whether there's something seriously wrong.